Guest post: Not as the side of truth but as the side of good

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20 responses to “Guest post: Not as the side of truth but as the side of good”

1. 

   Mostly Cloudy

   May 22, 2026 5:33 PM

   It’s very, very, very hard to get the message across that we’re the good guys when so many of the loudest voices on our side constantly, willingly align themselves with the bad guys.

   Good point. I still see women who describe themselves as “GC Feminists” online defending Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, even after she turned up at the Unite the Kingdom rally with Tommy Robinson and other fascists.

   https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/nationalist-and-pro-palestine-rallies-flood-the-streets-around-westminster
2. 

   Artymorty

   May 22, 2026 5:59 PM

   Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull has crossed so many horrible lines she’s beyond toxic. But her brand has thrived nevertheless, mostly by capitalizing on her critics’ mistakes. She’s got a rabid fanbase that, tribally, will not hear any criticism of their idol. You criticize her, her rabid loyalists set out to attack you. It’s very threatening, and very irrational. And utterly toxic. You criticize Posey Parker, her minions set out, like robots, to find your weakness and destroy you. They don’t even think before they go. They’re automatons, wired up to destroy any danger that might appear in the way of their master. I’ve had very direct conversations with mutliple GCs who stated plainly that they can’t stand KJK but that it’s not worth it to challenge her cult of personality. This is dangerous, people! We shouldn’t be letting a cult of personality take root within the gender critical movement, especially given how small and intimate the movement is. But the key here is: everyone told me PRIVATELY how toxic KJK is. I spoke up publicly against her, citing specific things she said that were wrong and bad, and she egomaniacally insinuated that she could destroy me at will. She was cultivating her cult of personality, revelling in it. No one backed me up. No one called her out for her egomaniacal unhingedness. At least not publicly.

   This is not how a healthy, progressive movement functions.
3. 

   Lady Mondegreen

   May 22, 2026 7:28 PM

   I reject this Manichean framing.

   All the logic and reason in the world is on our side, but this war isn’t being fought in the domain of logic and reason. It’s about political image, identity, and tribal affiliation. The gender movement has sold itself not as the side of truth but as the side of good

   So how about we avoid such emotive reasoning by refusing to participate in it. For example:

   It’s very, very, very hard to get the message across that we’re the good guys when so many of the loudest voices on our side constantly, willingly align themselves with the bad guys.

   (Emphasis added.)

   There are people who disagree with me on some very important issues: religion, how best to organize society, etc.

   Most of them aren’t “bad guys.” They’re people I disagree with. So far as I can tell, at least, they’re no more “bad,” or dangerous to society, than the leftists who despise the West, libel Israel, support Hamas, support the immigration laws that have caused so many problems in Europe, and support transgenderism.

   I reject the Manichean framing of “good guys” versus “bad guys.” There are authoritatians, psychopaths, and people willing to use violence on both sides.
4. 

   JScarry

   May 22, 2026 8:08 PM

   The fact that you refer to her as Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull indicates that you are not objective. That’s not her name. It’s what the right-wing nutters refer to her as. It’s like calling Obama, Barack Hussein Obama. Do better.
5. 

   Artymorty

   May 22, 2026 8:29 PM

   No, that’s her actual name. And I also called her “Posey Parker” for good measure. Please stop looking for tribal signals, little tribal “outs”, like, this person can be dismissed because he used the wrong name. This is tribalism at its worst. You’re not addressing issues, you’re coasting on “you used the wrong symbolic name” and then shutting down all critical thinking that follows. In fact, you LITERALLY SUGGESTED that I used the wrong name therefore I’m tainted.

   To you I throw your dumb words back in your face:

   DO BETTTER.
6. 

   Artymorty

   May 22, 2026 9:42 PM

   @Lady Mondegreen,

   C’mon. I only used “bad guys” and “good guys” as shorthand, as placeholders to get a greater point across. I thought that was rather obvious. No, I’m not a simpleton who sees the world in black-and-white. That should go without saying.
7. 

   Bjarte Foshaug

   May 23, 2026 1:59 AM

   Once again, if the fate of Movement Atheism™ should have taught us any lessons, it’s that rejecting one particular subset of unjustified beliefs does not amount to rejection of bad ideas in general, nor does it imply that everyone who rejects said beliefs is doing so for the right reasons. Just because critical thinking and sound reasoning (if applied consistently) lead to “atheism” it doesn’t follow that atheism leads to critical thinking and sound reasoning. Well, being “gender critical”, like being an “atheist”, only tells us what someone doesn’t believe in. It doesn’t imply that whatever beliefs and attitudes they do embrace are all kosher. It is always worth asking ourselves, not just what potential “allies” are against, but what they’re in favor of; not just what they’re seeking to abolish, but what they want to put in its place; not just where they’re trying to get away from, but where they’re hoping to get to. As I keep repeating ad nauseam, it takes more to be a friend than being the enemy of my enemy.

   If your reason for rejecting gender ideology in the first place is its contempt for facts, you’re eventually going to discover that there’s a downside to allying with people who insist that Trump won the 2020 election, that Ukraine started the war, that vaccines are a hoax, and that Renee Good and Alex Pretti were “terrorists” who were killed in “self-defense”. If you’re sincerely opposed to the illiberalism and censoriousness of TRAs on principled grounds (as opposed to only when the other side is doing it), you’re probably not going to find that much real common ground with people who defend weaponizing the whole apparatus of the government to go after journalists, universities, comedians, or anyone else who say things the president don’t like – no matter how factually accurate. If your opposition to gender ideology is motivated by its raging misogyny, there’s an obvious drawback to allying with people who blame the women’s rights movement for the excesses of trans rights activism, actively oppose justice for the Epstein victims, and are determined to defend grabbing women by the pussy to the death. If you’re mainly motivated by gender ideology’s homophobia and the forced teaming of LGB and TQ+, then allying with people who oppose TQ+ because they see it as the logical consequence of the battle for LGB rights is inevitably going to backfire etc. etc. Reasons matter.
8. 

   Papito

   May 23, 2026 3:48 AM

   “This is not how a healthy, progressive movement functions.” Sure, but maybe some people don’t want to be part of a “healthy, progressive movement” anymore. At this point, I find the term “progressive” as irredeemably tainted as Amnesty International. It started off meaning one thing, but now it always seems to end up at “queers for Palestine.”

   These days, I’d rather imagine a post-tribal politics, where we don’t cancel someone who wants to work with us on one thing because they’re working with someone we don’t like on another thing. How about we work on problems with whoever wants to pitch in on them? And then we don’t work with those people on their other projects that don’t appeal to us? We don’t need to form political tribes. At this point, political tribe scare me more than they reassure me.

   When I felt I had to pull my son out of school at six because he was so miserable he was developing anxiety that would plague him for years, I was able to homeschool him instead only because of laws that were passed by right-wing Christians, who are very much not my tribe. I used their websites to learn about our rights, and to write my letters to the school district. Those same people surely also worked on things I disagree with, like overturning Roe v. Wade. Should I have refused to homeschool my desperate son because the only people who would help me do so were evangelical Christians? Should I have waited for good laws passed by liberals? I’d still be waiting, and my son’s an adult now.

   On that one topic, I – who was born and raised as an atheist – had more in common with evangelical Christians than I did with mainstream liberals, many of whom argued against our right to homeschool.

   When we gender-critical (sex realist) people, whether religious or not, celebrated milestones in legal progress against the trans curse, should we have first checked the receipts? If the receipts said there were Christians up in there, we should have said, no, we’ll wait for someone we agree with on everything to come along before we try to make some progress? We would have been stuck like Didi and Gogo waiting forever. When Nick Meriwether won his case against Shawnee State, I celebrated. I really didn’t care that the ADF, without whom there would have been no case, was also doing things I didn’t like elsewhere. It was something, and we needed something, anything to keep us going.

   Kelly Jay Keen came along because the time needed someone like her and nobody else was ready and willing. She took the hits, and she deserves the credit for what she’s done. We don’t need to get into whether other things she’s doing meet with our approval. There are graffiti and fridge magnets and tshirts and people out there now saying “adult human female…” and there probably wouldn’t be if she hadn’t come along and caused so much trouble. Now we find out she’s a troublemaker and we are appalled? Only a troublemaker would have caused as much trouble as she did, and maybe she’s now moved on to trouble we don’t like. But we really don’t need to agree with her views on Islam to agree with her views on sex.

   For Women Scotland won a clarification of the essential rights of every single British woman. And they have collaborated with the Christian Institute and the Institute of Economic Affairs. Should the women of Britain have been asked to wait for a group that refused to associate with the likes of them in an Education not Indoctrination conference? For purity’s sake?

   Chiles vs Salazar was a huge win for the sex realist side in America; it invalidated the so-called “conversion therapy” bans that prevent children who are infatuated with trans ideology from encountering realism in their therapy. Parents whose kids are suffering have long been put in a terrible position knowing that they may be unable to find therapists who will provide reality-based care because of the bans. In my state, it is illegal for a therapist to suggest to a boy that his belief he’s really a girl inside might be mistaken. I was lucky to find my son a therapist who would walk right up to the edge of the law, and he could have lost his career for it. Chiles, an evangelical Christian, was represented by the ADF, and the case wouldn’t have moved forward without them. I don’t agree with her, or them, on everything, but she has won important rights for children and parents -and therapists – across the country. All the bans will fall like dominoes now.

   Every time I’ve seen a milestone in sex realism to celebrate, I’ve seen – either in the foreground, like in Chiles, or in the background, like Skrmetti – evangelical Christian groups like the ADF supporting and celebrating as well. And every time I’ve also seen the group Arty wants to appeal to – those tribally loyal to the left – screaming their heads off in outraged opposition.

   I’m still a liberal. I still believe in the same things I always did, responsible government, democracy, freedom of speech and association, etc. But when I needed to homeschool my autistic son, where were the other liberals? They were telling me I was abusing my privilege and wealth and should put my son back in the public school. When, eight years later, I needed to extricate my son from trans cult beliefs, where were the other liberals? They were telling me I was the abuser, and I should march my son right down to the chemical castration clinic.

   Forced teaming, purity spirals, and political tribalism are what got us into this mess. They’re not going to get us out. We need a post-tribal politics. The great mob of those tribally loyal to the left have to wake up and realize that they don’t agree on everything, it’s okay not to agree on everything, and we can only move forward to a better government and a better society if we knock it off with the tribalism.
9. 

   Bjarte Foshaug

   May 23, 2026 5:34 AM

   As Papito rightly points out, we’re not in the luxurious position of having lots of attractive options to chose from, and sometimes we may have to work with Stalin to defeat Hitler (the “Stalin” of the analogy, as far as I’m concerned, being the woke, progressive crowd, and “Hitler” being Trump, the MAGA movement, and their equivalents throughout the world). The problems the world is currently facing are either going to be solved by flawed (and sometimes awful) people, or they’re not going to be solved at all. There is simply no one else out there to do the job. I also completely agree with the point about tribalism. Any tribe of any kind is too cultish for my taste.

   I still think there’s a distinction to be made between a reflexive refusal to work with people who share some of our goals (albeit for fundamentally incompatible reasons) out of tribal partisanship and a demand for ideological purity, and talking openly and honestly about the exact nature of our “alliances”. The lesser evil is still evil, and just because we’re willing to work with our enemies for one specific purpose it doesn’t mean our values are the same or even compatible. As I keep saying, the problem with such Faustian bargains is that they create a psychological stake in defending your choice (“If they really were that bad, a decent person like myself wouldn’t be working with them”). Motivated reasoning does the rest, and before you know it you have turned 180° and embraced the polar opposite of everything you used to stand for. I’m sure we can all think of specific examples.
10. 

    Bjarte Foshaug

    May 23, 2026 6:27 AM

    Of course there is also just a public image angle to it, and I suspect this was Arty’s main point. Guilt by Association arguments may not be logically sound, but as we all know most people most of the time don’t think in Aristotelian syllogisms. TRAs are already working overtime to conflate any opposition to gender ideology with MAGA, and it obviously doesn’t help when some of the people on the GC “side” are going out of their way to hand them all the free ammunition they could ever hope for. I reject gender ideology as much as anyone, and even I now approach “GC” material with caution (is this the healthy, benign kind or the MAGA kind?). Which really sucks because ultimately my reasons for opposing Gender Ideology, as well as wokeism in general (the indifference to facts, the misogyny, the tribalism, the identity politics, the illiberalism, the censoriousness, the intolerance of dissent etc.), overlap almost perfectly with my reasons for opposing MAGA.
11. 

    Papito

    May 23, 2026 8:38 AM

    Bjarte, are you saying that, by and large, people are just too stupid, or their thinking processes are just too primitive, to understand a form of politics where people agree on some things and disagree on others?

    I can’t help but feel like people used to behave that way more when I was young and could return to behaving that way. Looking back into political history, I can see I am not mistaken – for example, in the Senate, senators voted with their party majority between 50 and 70% of the time from the fifties through the eighties, and now it’s as high as 96%.

    That increase in political tribalism isn’t helping us get good things done.
12. 

    Mostly Cloudy

    May 23, 2026 9:38 AM

    Tribal allegiance is instinctual, deep-rooted, and liable to shut down any challenge to it the instant it smells danger. Just one connection to the Alliance Defending Freedom is enough for most people to shut out someone who’s trying to get them to change their mind.

    Here’s the thing, Artymorty: when I first stopped believing in gender ideology around 2020, I thought the majority of people on the “progressive” or “left-wing” side would also stop beliving in it after witnessing some event that would make it clear that this ideology was harming women, gay & lesbian youth, and disabled youth.

    Over the subsequent years, we saw:

    * The December 2021 Keira Bell judgment ;

    * The Wi Spa issue ;

    * Jacob Breslow resigning from Mermaids ;

    * The Cass Report;

    * The Stephen Ireland abuse scandal.

    Nothing worked. There was no discernible change. The tribal allegiance remained unshifted. To dissent even mildly from gender ideology was still to make you a pariah in most “progressive” circles. Left-wing websites like Novara Media continued publishing articles about “life-saving puberty blockers”.

    And carrying a placard calling people to “Punch a TERF”, “Rape a TERF” or “Kill a TERF” is still acceptable at some “left-wing” public protests. And yet these same people will vilify anyone with even the tiniest connection to groups like the ADF or the Christian Institute.
13. 

    Ophelia Benson

    May 23, 2026 9:41 AM

    Actually the stats show that there has been a discernable change. I saw a news item about the numbers just the other day.
14. 

    Mostly Cloudy

    May 23, 2026 10:11 AM

    Oh really? That is good news.
15. 

    Lady Mondegreen

    May 23, 2026 12:00 PM

    @Papito

    Forced teaming, purity spirals, and political tribalism are what got us into this mess. They’re not going to get us out. We need a post-tribal politics.

    Hear, hear.

    I belong to several Facebook groups full of people from all over the political spectrum. More and more left/centrist liberals, like myself, call ourselves “politically homeless,” because the tribalism of the left has gotten out of hand. It’s Pharyngula writ large.

    In these groups, liberals and conservatives, atheists and theists, find areas of agreement and hold (reasonably) civil arguments, while kids of all ages keep popping in to call us all fascists and MAGA. In one of these groups I learned a saying: “Conservatives think leftists are mistaken. Leftists think conservatives are evil.”

    It’s interesting to speculate about the reasons for this. The takeover of academia by postmodern critical (social) theory is a big part of it. But in any case, we don’t need more of it.
16. 

    Mostly Cloudy

    May 23, 2026 2:29 PM

    Lady Mondegreen,

    I’d agree that a lot of people on the political centre and political left now feel politically homeless, because of the “policing” of these causes for dissent from gender ideology. If you publicly advocate the use of nuclear power, you won’t risk getting throw out of your local progressive organisation – but you will if you say anything about not putting male rapists in women’s prisons.

    That said, Donald Trump and Nigel Farage are both conservatives, and they certainly don’t think leftists are just “mistaken”…
17. 

    Your Name’s not Bruce?

    May 23, 2026 8:07 PM

    It’s so strange that “knowing that men can’t be women” could become the basis of a “tribal identity”, any more than “knowing there’s no such thing as unicorns” could. Assuming that “knowing men aren’t women” does constitute the basis of a “tribe” is going to lead to forced teaming as egregious as that of LGB and TQadinfinitum. Agreement on (what should be) the bedrock foundations of material reality is no promise or indication of any other commonly held beliefs or opinions at all.

    Genderism has staked itself off as an extreme, incoherent, fundamentally dishonest, and reality-denying movement. That it has gained so much power and influence is remarkable and appalling. That it should have a wide range of people, holding a bewildering variety of opinions on just about everything else shouldn’t come as a surprise. Lots of people know that the sky is blue, and that 2+2=4. Agreement on that doesn’t constitute any kind of political alliance. In a saner world, opposition to genderism would be the same, and would not entail, or invite the imputation of acceptance of the dangerous and authoritarian tendencies of some others who also happen to know the colour of the sky, or how to add.

    It is remarkable that genderists have managed to cloak themselves, as Arty points out, in the cloak of “goodness” while promoting an ideology that is so at odds with the truth. Setting aside the whole reality-denial, untue thing, how do they get to claim to be the good guys when they inflict so much harm in pursuit of their goals? And how do they get so many to go along with this mantle of self-styled righteousness, despite the harassment, threats, intimidation, assault, rapes that women have been subjected to as an inevitable and predicted result of the successful implementation of their political program. THIS is what the UK Labour Party’s dithering has been in support of. THIS is what they want to continue. They cannot plead ignorance. Not at this point. This was a choice. They knew the costs to women because women have told them. Repeatedly. Still, they dragged their feet. Deliberately. WHY?

    If gender ideology were a consumer product, it would have been pulled from the shelves long ago as dangerous, and its manufacturers would have been sued to bankruptcy. Instead, it is lauded, feted, and defended, with its victims made to suffer even longer, as Labour tries to water down and complicate the Supreme Court ruling, and frets over the fear, sorrow, and shame, of having to tell entitled men in dresses that they can no longer have everything that belongs to women.
18. 

    iknklast

    May 23, 2026 10:49 PM

    Not Bruce, I mostly agree with you, but it seems to me as if gender ideology is a consumer product in many ways. That is one reason it’s staying strong; there is a strong market force allied with a group willing to use physical force to get what they want.
19. 

    Bjarte Foshaug

    May 24, 2026 1:13 AM

    Papito

    My misanthropy is hardly a well guarded secret, but In this case I was simply trying to make the point that there are serious downsides to making a common cause with people who may be against some of the same things as you, but have very different ideas about what to put in their place. It may still be the least bad option (the Stalin vs. Hitler analogy again), but let’s not pretend there isn’t a Faustian bargain going on.

    As I have said many times on this very blog, people are not split into those who are right about everything and those who are wrong about everything. People often act as if they are “too stupid*, or their thinking processes are just too primitive” to understand this (hence the reflexive tendency to classify anyone who’s not 100% with “us” as being 100% with “them”), but I think it has more to do with intellectual dishonesty and bad faith than any particular cognitive impairment.

    And once again, just in case there’s any doubt, I wasn’t talking about “conservatives”**, and certainly not anyone who has issues with woke identity politics (that would rule me out as well). If your allies respect facts and are dedicated to democracy, liberal values, free speech, neutral institutions, the rule of law etc., but are skeptical of revolutionary change, have serious reservations about concentrating too much power at the federal government level, prefer slightly lower taxes, more privatization, and less government spending than I do etc., I wasn’t talking about them.

    * Speaking for myself, I never think of anyone as “stupid” unless I think they have what it takes to know better. It wouldn’t occur to me to think of small children, the mentally disabled, or, for that matter, animals as “stupid”. That still leaves a lot of stupid people out there.

    ** As I have said many times, I don’t agree with those who portray Trumpism as simply the logical consequence of what “conservatives ” have been up to all along. Trumpism is a radical revolutionary movement if ever there was one and is actively hostile to traditional conservative ideas and values like meritocracy, limited government power, a preference for incremental reform over revolutionary change, the idea that “character” matters etc.
20. 

    twiliter

    May 24, 2026 4:38 AM

    Bjarte, yes I had forgotten that — I recall ‘character matters’ used by conservatives against Clinton back in the ’90s. Now we have a president utterly lacking character (as defined by traditional moral values). I didn’t care for Slick Willy back then either, though he managed to do a fair job of presidenting comparatively (I guess). Now look at what the right wing tribe has installed (twice), the absolute worst of the worst.

    I suppose, as Papito notes, that if 96ish percent of people are simply voting party lines, that these candidates need only ally themselves, or appear to. Trump did that very thing, he’s always been a political chameleon, who is now a RINO who calls out other RINOs. It’s not allegiance, it’s the bandwagon effect.